Technology in Education Essay Example

Educational system is what makes the world evolve with technology but is it a boom or doom with the students of today. Technology today is taking over the world the expansion of its use in homes, businesses and in our educational system in both positive and negative ways. The American baseball coach, Yogi Berra anticipated such change when he said “ (Richard Satava) The art of learning and feeding our thirsty brain for knowledge through reading a book, writing on paper, using a telephone book or even writing directions down has become foreign to mostly everyone in the world today. Technology is now the new tool to motivate and make our lives easier by presenting us with a map of information further than our brain can imagine by just surfing on the internet or “Is Google Making Us Stupid” (Carr) Technology can be great for everyone involved if used as a stepping stone what is needed and not as a handicap. The handicap can be that we may lose the ability to concentrate or even to contemplate what we need to do.

Technology can provide us with a limitless amount of possibilities that tools that teachers and students used such as pen, paper and chalk boards times would have never imagined. Teachers and students are using smart boards, computers, tablets and smart phones to teach and learn their lessons. The progression in technology has added so many advancements to class room activities while also playing a major role in full-time distance teaching. Distance learning has had a huge impact on rural schools that may have disadvantages allowing them to offer better opportunities, by connecting teachers as well as students to access a broader range of resource materials, providing an access to education for those that may have limitations with time due to work, family or physical limitations. The use of interactive satellite instruction also can help resolve the problem with teacher shortages. The educational system has helped technology and vice versa it has allowed us to instead of sitting in a class to hear an instructor teach a class we can have an instructor teach us from across the world in we can interact with one another. However the disadvantages that may come along with distance education can be the time it takes to learn the many different avenues that are being invented every day. Rabbi Kook, a significant thinker of the 19th Century said “In every era, you need to learn how to use the elements that influence the generation” (Kook). In order for the technology to work it requires that students be more active and have the motivations as well as the initiative to do the work. Occasionally a person may feel isolated with a limited support team for them which may result in no-completion of the program. It also may have a huge demanding time and work impact on the instructor. Distance learning is not for everyone it takes a person that is disciplined as well as flexible for both teachers and students.

Educational technology tools have made some teacher’s job much easier in finding ways to connect with students. New tools that make it better for education are hitting the market at a rapid pace, or adding features to the existing ones, this can make it difficult for a teacher to keep up with the newest and most valuable tool to help with education. Tools such as smart phones, lap tops, tablets, as well as electronic smart boards are just some of the tools that make learning and teaching a lot easier. Students can retrieve different types of information from everywhere quicker than researching and reading a book could ever have. Technology has allowed us to Google anything and within seconds reliable sources will be listed. Apps are allowing us to keep up with politics, sports and current events helping to keep students even more educated as well as informed on the current events. The use of technology is bringing information to us almost as soon as it is happening. Things that are happening now like the information on the Syria attacks with the chemical weapons, the Snowden leaks that are happening in the government to the terrible devastation of hurricane of Irene and Sandy. The disastrous explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger and the World Trade Center bombing was brought to us all over the world as it was happening. We are informed all the time as these events are occurring giving us insight instead of waiting for it to be published in a textbook. The use of technology in education and life is keeping us ahead of times making us prepared for what is happening now and in the past instead of reading what happened “once upon a time”.

Technology today are giving students a face to reality to the learning instead of just reading and memorizing them from print. It makes the life of learning like a game or a party instead of a task that was regretted in the past. From birth to limitless age technology has offered us the possibilities of always acquiring some type of knowledge. It relates to all types of people it has no limit on age, color or sex giving a life to what is being learned which is making it more interesting. The downside of this is when students have technology at their freedom such as cellphones they can become easily distracted from what needs to be taught. Instead of learning students are playing games or going on social networking sites such as Facebook.

There are many search engines such as AOL, Google, Bing, and Yahoo that gives us access to many different views of people on a topic that are researched or published instead of depending on things that have been edited to be put into text. Researching or looking for a text book on the topic that we need to learn about takes time, technology puts it at our fingertip faster than the speed of light. The many different views or news that can be gathered on the internet gives the person seeking it the freedom to see much different view and to formulate our own meaning of the subject at our own pace. However along with advantages the disadvantage of information being access instantaneously is changing the way students are making decisions as well as processing the information. The abundance of information that can be accessed on the internet does not give students the patience that was needed for the way research was done through reading books. “Google encourages our minds to flit from thing to thing rather than concentrating on following a sustained argument.” Students tend to look up the answers and just copy them down word for word without getting the concept of the topic or actually learning the material. (Rich)

Information is always changing or being improved as these things are being introduced technology is allowing us to see those changes immediately as happens. Science has had it advancement thanks to the invention of things in technology making it easier to split molecules, making it easier for statistics to be analyzed in JMP, or you English research paper to be grammar and spell checked. The time that is saved doing this allows time to be done doing something else. However students are not getting the fundamentals of English grammar without using the computer to check their work or the old way of doing math with just your brain, pencil and paper.

The use of different technology in helping with education is allowing so many different learning styles catering and helping not only the ones that are able to learn in the traditional settings but to help students that have one weakness in a subject or any type of learning disabilities giving them a chance to learn. Technology has allowed for books and instructions to be read to us helping kids with reading comprehension, enjoy and understand there lessons, even teaching them at their own pace how to read. It can be a learning support to many different subjects instructing us on step by step instruction visually teaching us the right way in problem solving. This situation is of a personal nature to me because I have three kids with learning disabilities and sometimes computer based learning is a part of their IEP and they have been known to do better on testing when given the same test on computer versus paper, I believe it is because they view the computer as a game and are intimidated by paper and pen. Giving a child the use of technology are keeping them entertained as well as giving them a chance to learn. The graphics in video games have made many children want to grow up to design these realistic games. Cable televisions along with videos such as Baby Can Read are allowing kids early to learn phonics at an early age so our kids are starting out wanting more and experiencing more when they are expected to learn. These types of videos, shows as well as games are meant to be used as tools to help the development of minds to increase knowledge as well as awareness. However according to the University of Washington on the study of infant vocabulary in the use of infant videos such as Baby Einstein infant vocabulary is slipping because of them. The University of Washington did a study with a 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota along with their babies on their vocabulary. The study found that babies 8-16 months of age that watched these videos for at least an hour knew 6-8 fewer than the 90 common words those babies knew that did not watch them.

Even though technology is a great advancement in helping us to learn it cannot function without effectively without some type of guidance. Technology should be used as a tool to learn and advanced and not as a crutch from getting away of using your brain. As in the persuasive paper done by William Badke “How Stupid is Google making Us”, he is suggesting that people are no longer putting their brain to much use and that we are allowing the internet to think for us. In order to keep our brain function we need to do research both on books as well on the internet, type as well as write using pen and paper, and do math calculations by hand as well as putting the numbers into the computer. With the strengthening of our brain by using it along with technology our world would not end by doom but evolve with a boom.